By default the synchronization is bi-directional, but you can change this when you install the utility or from the options dialog. The only significant drawback is that you can only synchronize your main Google Calendar, but a future update should remove this limitation.

Google installs a small program that loads at start-up and sits on your system tray, while waiting for the next synchronization (the default sync interval is 2 hours). After synchronizing your calendar with Outlook, you can access it offline and synchronize it with your mobile phone.

It's worth noting that Google's new tool works with Google Apps accounts and it's another step towards making Google Apps more business-friendly.

168 comments:

This is almost great news. I've recently been trying to figure out how to sync my multiple google calendars with my new iPhone. Dunno what that's like on a mac, but as a windows user I'm struggling to find a decent solution for synching outlook and gcal. Hope they add multiple calendar support to this soon...

syncmycal - tried it, but the way it syncs doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever with mulitple calendars, I either got the same event multiple times or nuclear whitewash.

Goosync currently (well, I checked yesterday so it may have changed ;) uses Funambol to sync with Outlook. That only syncs one calendar AFAICT.

oggsync I'd not come across - will take a look.

Amusingly I can sync multiple calendars with my lightning calendars in thunderbird very nicely with gcal via the gcal provider plugin https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/sunbird/addon/4631so a lightning/sunbird to outlook sync that supports multiple calendars might do the trick. If one exists, I've not found it.

In the short term, I'm currently resigned to living with just my main calendar on my iPhone and see how I get on with that.

I tried it immediately (and failed)!!Its giving a simple and understandable error... "Google Calendar Sync: Error syncing your calendar" Is it to do with Proxy?? not sure, if someone knows how to get it working in a proxy env... will love to know about it.

Dear All,I have Test it, i found 1 Bug.Whenever you add your calendar into MS Outlook 2007 and sync into Google Calendar, Reminder is set as Pop - 15 Minuets. My Default Reminder already set as Email - 10 Min. and SMS - 10 MIN. so you have change reminder manual in every event which you added into MS Outlook.Ajit Mogra

I'm having some trouble with syncing Outlook 2003 and my main calendar in Google Apps. The install was very smooth and I get no error messages when the sync is attempted. It takes around 20 seconds to load Google Calendar events, but when attempting to sync to Outlook it quits. When this happens it also closes Outlook. Still, early days...

I still think Plaxo is the best. I've been using it for a couple months and it seemlessly syncs between my several computers (outlook), GMAIL, etc.. Big downside is you have to pay for the option to remove duplicates.

I've been looking for something like this for quite a while and everytime I look I end up disappointed. For a while I tried to use http://remotecalendars.sourceforge.net/ but it never seemed to work quite right.

I really like the idea of this, but as of right now it's really light on options. For example, it'd be nice to be able to tag things coming in from the Google calendar into a "GoogleCal" type category... it'd also be nice if I could choose to do two-way sync of only certain categories (or all but certain ones). I'd also like the ability to use more than just the primary calendar (my wife and I have a shared calendar that most of my events go to).

Plaxo is a far better solution. It has a toolbar for Outlook and Thunderbird that syncs with Outlook, Gmail and Calendar, Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, AOL. That covers about 99.9% of people.If you have an iPhone or Smartphone, then you can sync everything everywhere.Here are step-by-step instructions on Syncing Everything Using the Plaxo Toolbar.

if you have issues with time zone information anyone, go here...www.intelliadmin.com -- Download Network Administrator 2.7 Trial.Then once it's started, on step 1, keep the same option that'slisted. then under step 2 select include local system. that's it,then click submit and then voila! google calendar sync works! it willfix the time zone problem!!!

My problem though is that it syncs and then closes Outlook automatically!

Bit of a problem given I'm syncing my personal Google calendar to my Work Outlook so that my Work Outlook can sync to my mobile phone.... and when I fail to notice Outlook has closed I wonder why I don't get any emails (oh, wait, is that a problem really?!?)

So, off I trot to the Google page that links to 'known issues' .. to discover the automatic shut down is not a known issue and I get the helpful suggestion to 'troubleshoot' which then takes me to numerous help options (none of which apply) and no way to report the 'fault'.

Anyone got any ideas how I tell Google their sync don't work correctly?!?

This is great news, or it would be if it would work with Outlook 2002 Nowhere in the Google information, or the reviews, does it say that this requires Outlook 2003 or higher. You only get told during installation. Anyone have a work around?

You can get this to work with Server 2003. Before you execute the installer, right click on the installer, and choose properties. Then click on compatibility and choose Windows XP. Worked for me with Outlook 2007 and server 2003.

Google released an update for Calendar Sync: 0.9.3.2. The latest release fixes the following issues:

- Some users experience Outlook crashing when syncing.

- Events end up in Outlook's "Deleted items" folder.

- Events not syncing from Outlook to Google Calendar when the email address used for Outlook isn't the same as your Google Account email address.

- Issues with third-party sync applications and Google Calendar (duplicate events, deleted data, etc.). You should no longer experience problems if you have third-party sync apps installed so long as they aren't syncing between Outlook and Google Calendar. For example, it's OK to sync Google Calendar with Lightning calendar. However, it's *not* OK to sync Outlook to Google Calendar using a third-party app while also using Google Calendar Sync.

Downgrading from beta version 0.9.3.2 back to beta version 0.9.3.0 worked for me! So here is a public download link for the older version of Google Calendar Sync 0.9.3.0. The web page is french, but the software download is english v0930, so if you go to the webpage:

Downgrading from beta version 0.9.3.2 back to beta version 0.9.3.0 worked for me! So here is a public download link for the older version of Google Calendar Sync 0.9.3.0. The web page is french, but the software download is english v0930, so if you go to the webpage:

pretty good it syncs outlook then I just sync outlook and my mobile phone via active sync. if you get the time zone error the fix is mentioned above but here goes the link http://www.intelliadmin.com/Daylight%20Saving%20Fix%20Download.asp scroll down to freeware downloads and select the saving time fix. later.

Downgrading from beta version 0.9.3.2 back to beta version 0.9.3.0 worked for me for 3 days! After 3 days I keep getting the error: "Error syncing your calendar". Please note the error code is no longer here.

We're up to 0.9.3.3, but still haven't seen support for anything other than your main calendar.

That's a real bummer to me, because I've got a whole bunch indicating when various things (games, albums, movies) AND I just got a PPC. Being able to sync all this stuff would've been perfect. As it is, the only calendar that syncs is the one that doesn't get as much use.

Here's hoping this problems gets fixed sooner rather than later; once it does, I will be one happy camper.

Here's another solution that I've cobbled together to be able to keep my multiple Google Calendars, and sync them with Outlook AND my iPhone. Not perfect, but it's something... http://motleyramblings.blogspot.com/2008/08/iphones-and-outlook-and-google-oh-my.html

I was using this with the Blackberry-gCal synch as well... it wound up doubling some meetings on all three calendars (Outlook, BB, and gCal) as well as sending meeting invites to past meetings to 100+ people in my company from my t-mobile account...Perhaps a better user manual might help...

Love it but having problems synching with new Anti virus software. The Shield Deluxe?? Without it running it syncs fine but with it - Google Sync asks for an internet connection! Firewall issues maybe? Hope to get sorted soon!

James said on November 12, 2008 2:45 PM PDT:I am seeing that Private appointments are no longer marked as Private when it syncs. Is anyone else noticing this? -------Yea, I am getting the same thing. I have the 1way street turned on (Outlook -->Google Calendar). When I mark an appointment as private (I don't have MS Exchange...POP), after the sync, my appointment in Google Calendar shows up as "default". My Google Calendar is private, but I have other selected user's that can view it, therefore I would like to have to ability to have private appointments on my Calendar using this tool.

Great tool but I have two issues: 1. Some of my appointments sync, some don't. The troubleshooting section doesn't seem to deal with this. And 2. every time it trys to sync I get the error "A program is trying to access e-mail addresses you have stored in Outlook. Do you want to allow this?" Anyone else having the same problems?

"Anonymous said on November 13, 2008 2:30 PM PDT:I think this is crazy that this problem has gone on so long. When I enable the outlook add-in, it crashes both outlook and gsync. Please fix this!!!Outlook 2007, Windows XP Pro SP3, gsync 0.9.3.5."

From the original post: "significant drawback is that you can only synchronize your main Google Calendar, but a future update should remove this limitation."How much longer are we going to have to wait for this obvious functionality. It's at best, half an application at the moment.

I'm encountering problems when I created meeting invitations for multiple people in outlook. After 2-way sync, I can no longer change the invitee list in outlook, as if I am not the organizer of the meeting.I can change the list in Google calendar though - but that means the invite gets sent from my private address, in stead of my work-e-mail-address.

About http://www.companionlink.com/googlesync CompanionLink shareware decided to delete some of my entries, and duplicate others. I can't retrieve the data. It corrupted data on my gmail account, and on my outlook.

I emailed a couple of times, and even used the reporting form from companionlink, but they didn't respond.

I love the calendar sync! I can put something on my phone and it goes straight to my computer... I would really love it if it automatically sync'd with my outlook contacts too. Is there anything in the works for outlook contacts?

Running Vista and Outlook '07 with latest Connector software and latest MSN calendar software. Since making these changes, Google sync will run for hours, and sync only a couple of appointments. One-way sync Outlook => Google

2 issues - first, you can't reset the calendar events and start over if you mess things up, unlike companiolink. second, if you have an ampersand in any of your contacts, it will crash after couple of days, since the & gets changed to & amp amp amp amp amp amp...

I have a WiMo-device that uses activesync to sync Outlook contacts and tasks (not calendar!). Then I use Google Calendar Sync to sync my Outlook calendar to my main Google-calendar.

Additionally I have a couple of different calendars I subscribe to at Google-calendar. To get everything to my WiMo I have registered at goosync (and paid to get multiple calendar support) and I sync all google calendars with my WiMo-device using the goosync-application from my WiMo-device.

By doing this I have all calendars, contacts and tasks synced with my WiMo-device. This works bidirectional and everything.

worked great for us since we installed it in 07, running outlook 2003.just upgraded the office to office/outlook 2007, and it stopped working. no errors reported by it.we uninstalled it, downloaded the newest version, installed it and nothing, not working, no errors. it says it's syncing, and finishes, but nothing shows up on the calendar. Any ideas????????

The best sync I have found for a Blackberry to a destop via a remote connections is Office Accelerator by Baseline Data Systems, Inc. There web site is www.baselineconnect.com. It is a terrific product for any BlackBerry user.

I used to face that irritating issue of Outlook crashing while google sync tries to sync the calendars. I searched the calendar forums high and low and tried various things (reinstalling gsync, outlook and what not) but wasn't able to find a solution and decided to find some other free tool.

I tried SyncMyCal - but this only syncs -3 days to +3 days (free version).

I also tried OggSync, which also has date range limitations.

I now use gSyncit (www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/) and I'd recommend it to others.

It has more options than Google Calendar Sync and works without any issues (so far). The free version allows me to sync my office Outlook calendar with any of my Google calendars and not just the Default one. The paid version allows multiple calendars and has more features.

I installed Google Calendar Sync for Outlook 0.9.3.5. While I assume that the UID and the Password between the client and Google servers is HTTPS encrypted, I have no idea whether the actual outlook calendar data moving between the server and client the traffic is encrypted. Any idea anyone ?

A lot of people advised me this tool-how to open ost in outlook 2003,as how as I remember program is free,it open ost file in Outlook 2003 and recover your data from these encrypted *.ost files,it allows to move *.ost files to *.pst ones fast and easy,it has two recovery options, first of all, you can move your *.ost file to a *.pst file, the last one can be easily opened by Microsoft Outlook or any other compatible email client.

Doesn't reliably sync all appointments. For example, today I had 8 appointments, but only 2 of them actually sync'd. I'm only using one Outlook calendar and one Google calendar. There's no error message or anything...it's just missing most of my events.

If I can't be sure it's syncing everything, then I can't use it at all.

I use companion sync for Act software for my business calendar and Google calendar for personal stuff. I want both on my Blackberry. Is there a way to use google sync one way? Does anyone have any ideas how to do this?

The iPhone becomes the focal point where all the multiple calendars are together and that is all I need when I am out and about.

Basically I do not see the other calendars from Outlook (not sure if I want my employer to see all my other appointments than work meetings) and if I really need something easier to edit than on my iPhone - I am not so good at typing on the iPhone yet. I used to be an expert Palm graffiti writer - then I just open a browser, log into my Google account and edit on the calendar(s) as needed.

However I did notice that my Outlook tends to crash more now that I have installed Google Calendar Sync (anyone else saw this?) but I might try to space the syncs to every 2 hours and see. Right now I have it every hour.

BTW I saw Plaxo mentioned a few times on this thread. As of this month, the sync is a pay-only feature. It was about to happen.

Others are using nuevasync but not sure about security ... I also heard that it dumps all the multiple calendars into one ...ugh. I like it that I am just with Google products for now. Keep in simple.

Thanks for pointing to gSyncit (www.daveswebsite.com/software/gsync/)! Since 5 minutes, I am evaluating this tool and it turns out to be very comprehensive in features and it runs quite fast as well. If I run into troubles, I'll update my post here...

If everything goes well, I'll definitely sign up for the version with multiple calendar support!

I loaded Google Sync onto my blackberry and went through the sync-ing process, but instead of actually sync-ing, my Google Calendar feature within Gmail on my PC is now entirely unusable. The comment says "page not redirecting properly: Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete" ---- any help? This is terrible!

I had the same thing happen and found out that Gmail only lets yoi sync so many things so often. We really dont know what that number is. I deleted gsync and purcahsed an inexpensive program called gsyncit and they have great tech support via e-mails and more options than gsync. All is working great now.

PS All this after days of trying many forums etc.... and absolutely no support from Google.

I currently sync my gmail calendar and contacts to my BBerry tour. I have to say that it is a nightmare. All my contact info gets scrambled and the are anywhere from 5 - 30 dups of my contacts. If google wants to make a push on the enterprise front for this type of online application, it should work as well as or better the MS outlook when you sync contacts.

I had the same problem as Anonymous from May 21. I had to sync to many things files, to often and it did not work with Google. i hated the delays or slow connection problems. I moved codetwo public folders - they also have live support by email, online meetings and by phone. no problems at all now.. all is synced in real time between many computers.

It seems to me like no matter how sophisticated and powerful the art of software design becomes, these dynamic young programmers just cannot get to grips with the problems of calendar syncing! With few exceptions, virtually every calendar and syncing system is either woefully incomplete, or inexcusably buggy. Whatever system you're using, look at the forums: they're full of desperate people asking why various common aspects of basic calendar functionality won't work. Multiple calendars? Forget about it: far too complicated for the software teams. Either that or people are having appointments wiped or suffering multiple entries of the same appointment every time they sync. The forums are full of people touting finicky workarounds or 3rd party apps which *almost* fix the problem but not quite...

The only sync I've found to work 100% perfectly is the one between Outlook and Blackberry. It's so damn simple and takes about a minute to set up. But introduce Google calendars into the mix and immediately it's no dice. If Google is serious about providing business functionality then they really have to sit down, read these complaints (I don't think they ever do) and work out between themselves how they're going to make this thing work so that people can actually use it for more complicated things than remembering birthdays and dinner dates. Come on Google, this is HOW many years now?

I have the same problem as March 30, 2010. New appointments that I setup are sync'd from Outlook to Google Calendar (and back). Meetings that I am invited to do not sync from Outlook to Google. Didn't have this problem at a previous company I worked for.

I quite frequently work with outlook emails and one day I couldn't read my new message. I didn't know what to do next. And entered the Google. Luckily for me I noticed - ost to pst. The utility relieved me within seconds and easily. Probably in like situation it will be useful.

Might help some people: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook-help/transfer-calendars-between-outlook-and-google-calendar-HA010167495.aspx

I just tried it out myself--I use Outlook calendar, my spouse uses Google calendar. I use Google Sync to upload my Outlook calendar to my Google account to share with him to view in Google. I just set up Outlook's internet calendar to download his Google calendar into my Outlook 2007. (Had to have him send me the ICAL private address from his Google calendar & then just followed the instructions in the 'Subscribe to...' section .)

I am new to Google calendars and gmail and all that, and fairly new to outlook as well. I am trying to manage two separate calendars (one for business and one for personal) on my iphone and the only way that seems possible is to have google calendars and sync it with outlook. I got to the point to where I was syncing outlook and google, but noticed that google was going to outlook but my appointments in outlook were not going to google. I am very confused and would like some help. PLEASE!!!! And thanks ahead of time :)

Hello everyone.Unfortunately Google doesn't seem to care about supporting sync with MS Outlook anymore. I have been waiting for many months for a release that would be compatible with Outlook 64 bit but they have never released it.Out of exasperation I asked a programmer to develop a software to do such a thing. It will be distributed freeware, donations will hopefully keep the project running

At the moment we just released the first beta version. It can be downloaded at the blog I have created for the purpose at http://outlook-google-sync.blogspot.com/For comments and feedbacks please use the following forumhttp://outlook-googlesync.forumfree.it/

Hi, I just tried this and it works semi-nicely. I added events through outlook, and now see them on Google calendars as well as my mobile phone. However, the events have disappeared on my outlook application? Anybody know how I can fix this?

I have now created a google calendar and I figured out what the problem was. My iPhone was creating a second calendar in outlook when I was syncing it. Google only syncs the main calendar. Now I've run into another issue. When syncing my iPhone with everything I've noticed some of my numbers are missing. Not the contact itself but some individual numbers. Any clue on how to fix this issue? Any help is appreciated. Thanks again.

I create a new "Private" events in my primary calendar in Outlook 2010.After Syncing with Google Calendar Sync, the event appear in Google Calendar but this events is not "Private" in Google Calendar. In that case everyone accessing my Calendar through Google Calendar can watch the detail of this event.My Calendar is shared with my collaborators and they should not see the content of this "private" event (but only the fact that I'm busy at this time).Please, please fix this problem, I know loads of people who would use Google calender but won't with this problem, this doesn't seem so difficult, right?

have been messing around with google calendar, ical & outlook 2010 for a week now, in the midst of changing phones to eithe keeping an android or going to the dark side iphone; after having an HTC EVO I thought I would go again with android but the whole calandar thing has really turned me off; cant sync multiple calandars, this and the fact that no way to sync bookmarks did me in on Android for my next phone; they really should work on fixing this it would have sold me on continuing with android.

Well - as far as I am concerned this sync outlook with google calendar just doesnt work.... having invested in the phone - I now have every event listed twice but no updates as outlook and google won't sync... at any cost... tried all the fixes I can understand .. but still no joy ... so I am left with a white elephant - my life is on my outlook calendar and that is where I want it to stay - so why the hell can't I sync it. Reinstalled calendar - google sync - fixed bugs in outlook. Still doesn't work. Anyone have an idiot's guide that I might be able to understand... Can't believe it really has to be this complicated.